The Tales of Beedle the Bard: The Creation
by Jume
Summary: The bard's explanation of the creation of good and evil and wizard and Muggle.


The names are from religion, the mechanisms from J.K. Rowling, the details from my mind. Mostly I'd just been thinking about wizard fairy tales and about more mundane wizard life (thank you Tanja for that inspiration:P) and the idea in the middle came, and the rest turned up according. I chose the Christian creation myth mainly because it's the one I believe in, but also the one I know the best, and as I was just telling this to my boyfriend, I didn't really feel like researching anything to make it longer and more complex. Fairy tales are relatively simple anyways. And that's what this is.

The first people were a man named Adam, a woman named Lilith, and another woman named Eve.

They lived happily where they were placed upon the earth, a garden with wonderful fruits and animals scampering around.

Then one day, another man appeared, dark in features and smiling all over. He hailed the three and greeted them.

"Children of God, may you live in good health this day!" and they returned his greeting curious, because they had never seen another human besides the three of them.

"Have you enjoyed yourselves? Eating of the fruits here and tending the animals?" Adam nodded; besides just existing with his playmates, these were the things that took up his time.

"Have you drank of the water, or woven the grasses or enchanted the. . ." And the dark stranger stopped, as though he had mispoken.

"Enchanted the what?" asked Lilith quickly.

"Oh, my apologies, madam. I spoke out of turn."

"No, tell me, what do you mean by "Enchant?" The woman stood and her long dark hair flowed around her waist, ivory in color and taut with youth.

"Did God not tell you about your abilities?" The three of them looked perplexed at him. God had told them many things, but He had never used that word.

"Oh piddle. He expects you to do everything with your hands I'd imagine." Eve looked at her companions trying to find the answers to the silent question behind the dark strangers words.

"Adam, I hunger. Let us go now." And the woman and the man left the grove, where the stranger and

Lilith stood alone.

"Sir, do you mean I would never have to use my hands again?" Lilith looked at her palms, grubby with the dirt of the earth and the hairs of the animals and the juices of the fruits. She had never done work in her life -- the garden was an easy life-- so underneath the film her hands would be soft and white.

"Well, you would use them, but not in the ways you do now." The stranger stepped away and walked up to the tree in the center of the Garden. The Tree of the Knowledge.

"Have you eaten of this tree?"

"Of course not. God told us we weren't to."

"Figures." He stooped and picked up a twig from the ground at the trees roots. Even the Devil was afraid to maim the tree of God's own hands. "Has he never forbidden you to touch it at all?"

"Well, I suppose not. But what nourishment can a stick give you?"

The man laughed at this. "Oh you silly girl. A stick indeed! This stick has the capabilities of good and evil, just as the fruit from its branches does. This stick will enable you to wield power upon the other two." And here he stopped, for Lilith had gained an eagerness in her eyes.

"Power? Could I. . Could I have them do what I want?" She was inventing the idea of force as she spoke.

The stranger smiled and held the stick out toward her. "I'm afraid I cannot tell you how to use this, least not here anyways." And he stepped away, behind a low hanging vine and was gone. Lilith stared down at her hands, she felt as though she were holding the wind. They did not have the eckletricity or vibrations back in the beginning.

The idea of Adam and Eve never arguing with her again, not that they had ever argued, but sometimes she tired of playing with the kittens and puppies, took hold over her whole mind.

"He cannot tell me here, but perhaps he can tell me elsewhere. . ." Lilith's mind turned dark in that place of light, and she sprang forth to find her companions.

Adam and Eve were indeed playing with the kittens, the first kittens that ever were, at that, when she asked them to leave the Garden with her to find the stranger and learn all she could.

"Oh Lilith, we couldn't possibly! God told us that we could live here forever. Don't you like it here?"

Eve's words stung her and if it were possible in that place of innocence and light, Lilith would have felt hatred toward her sisterfriend.

"If you won't help me, then I will just have to go alone! You'll regret it if I leave here and die!"

Adam and Eve looked at each other. What was that, "die"?

Lilith made her way to the outspringing of trees, passed by a silent illuminous figure she had never neglected to embrace before, and ahead saw the two angels she must pass. In her head, she began to concoct the precursors to the Lie, but she could not think of anything, as she had never been taught, but it was no trouble, as the two solemn figures merely looked past her.

The beings of Heaven knew that she did not belong to them now, that they could not win her back.

Lilith left at sunset and spent the first night ever. In the garden, you never really felt the night; the trees seemed to glow themselves. But outside, the harsh arid land prevailed, and the moon rose full and seductive over the horizon. She heard the calls of the animals who had the power of night vision and of flight that had left the Garden-- the bats and the owls-- and those small enough to crawl as well-- the toads and the scorpions and the snakes.

She felt all of these and knew that they were her lot now; once you left, how could you ever return, so tainted?

There was a shadow ahead, and in it she found a cave. Walking steadily (for what was fear?) inside, she saw she still had the twig in her hand, and now it was giving off a faint glow. After a time she came to a cavern, and there the handsome dark stranger stood.

"I wondered if you would ever make it."

He took the stick from her hand, and suddenly Lilith found out she did know what fear was. He pointed it to her and said words that were harsh and painful upon her ears, which had only heard the hymns of the earth before. She found she could not move, and she could feel every grit of the sanded floor prick her naked body as she lie upon it.

The man extinguished the light, so that when he cut her open_there_with the stick(it did not feel like a stick, it was sharper but the more sensual and excruiciating), she was surprised.

He laughed, threw it at her, and suddenly she could move, so she picked up the twig she had thrown her life away for, and held herself, feeling the dull ache between her newly formed pair of lips and the ticklish trickle of the blood that ran between them.

She did not truly know death, otherwise when she pointed the twig at herself, she would have wished for it, but she wished for healing instead, and a kind of scab was formed over the cut. But the stranger had cut her with a powerful curse, so she could not repair it totally, even had she been able to do more than wish.

While she sat in the cave waiting for the bleeding to stop, she did not know that the stranger had revisited the Garden, in another guise, and landed her companions in a similar fix.

Eve had another cut, but one she deserved and was not healed back any.

And that is why some witches have a covering on their parts and some do not.

The creatures of the night took refuge in Lilith's cave, and she began to understand what they spoke to her. Her fear mingled with her desire for her friends, and in that, they became twisted desires..

The creatures whispered words she could say to make the stick work for her as it had for the Stranger, and one night, she crept out, still naked, for how could God see her, so far inside the earth? and found that Adam was asleep not far away. She was surprised and pleased that she did not have to lure him out of the watchful care of God, and this gave her confidence.

She whispered words and he came to his feet and followed her, still asleep and snoring quietly.

She led him to her cave, and forced his clothes off and had her way with him. He woke up in the night perplexed, and a little afraid. Fear had entered his heart after he was banished, and he did not know either of his companions were near.

Lilith could see in the dark, or rather she could see with the glow of the branch off of the Tree of the

Knowledge of Good and Evil, and she cried to see this man she had once loved with the simplicity of a child, and that night with the fierceness of a woman, and she whispered again, and Adam fell asleep and she walked him out, knowing he would not remember anything in the morning.

Eve had been waiting awake ever since she heard him get up the first time, and she lie awake still, watching for the return of what she had begun to call her husband. She could see by the light of the kind stars that her once sisterfriend was who had taken him..

"Lilith, where have you taken my Adam?"

"Eve, sister, did you not miss me?"

Eve remained silent.

"I have just taken Adam with me for a little talk. He will remember nothing about it, so don't press him too hard."

Eve started. "What do you mean he won't remember?" The fear was in her heart as well.

Lilith smiled and left. She knew the other woman could never find her.

Nine moons later, neither of the women had had the bleeding again. Eve though perhaps it was a one-time curse from her God. Lilith knew better why it had stopped.

One particularly dark night, there were twin screams. Eve, with a panicked Adam fluttering around, an Adam who wasn't sure what to do, and wished he had a purpose (Boiling water? What is that?)

Lilith was alone. Well, she had her dark creatures, but no human eyes saw her child coming forth.

Each woman raised her child in kind. Lilith begat the race of witches and wizards, and Eve the race of the non-magical (muggle? is that a fish?) humans.

However, as much as Lilith consorted with creatures of the night and their Master (he came a few moons after her child was born, and strangely her milk dried up soon afterwards. Eve's did too, but she learned that was because of Adam) the first child was still born of Adam.

He grew up golden, always asking his mother "Why?"

The second child, a girl, born the same night as Eve's second boy, was dark like her own father and only asked her mother "How?"

Eve's firstborn also asked "Why?", but his brother asked "How much?" and they did not ask of their mother. The eldest did not understand why, and was jealous of his brother and killed him.

And thus there was good and evil in wizards and Muggles alike.


End file.
